Veronika Decides to Die

But he was let out. And when he left the sanatorium for the last time, determined never to go back, he had made two promises: (a) that he would one day write about the subject and (b) that he would wait until both his parents were dead before touching publicly on the issue, because he didn’t want to hurt them, since both had spent many years of their lives blaming themselves for what they had done.

His mother had died in 1993, but his father, who had turned eighty-four in 1997, was still alive and in full possession of his mental faculties and his health, despite having emphysema of the lungs (even though he’d never smoked) and despite living entirely off frozen food because he couldn’t get a housekeeper who could put up with his eccentricities.

So, when Paulo Coelho heard Veronika’s story, he discovered a way of talking about the issue without breaking his promises. Even though he had never considered suicide, he had an intimate knowledge of the world of the mental hospital – the treatments, the relationships between doctors and patients, the comforts and anxieties of living in a place like that.

So let us allow Paulo Coelho and his friend Veronika to leave this book for good and let us get on with the story.

Veronika (#ulink_f14784cf-e07c-517d-96e6-449385c9dd93)didn’t know how long she had slept. She remembered waking up at one point – still with the life-giving tubes in her mouth and nose – and hearing a voice say:

‘Do you want me to masturbate you?’

But now, looking round the room with her eyes wide open, she didn’t know if that had been real or an hallucination. Apart from that one memory, she could remember nothing, absolutely nothing.

The tubes had been taken out, but she still had needles stuck all over her body, wires connected to the area around her heart and her head, and her arms were still strapped down. She was naked, covered only by a sheet, and she felt cold, but she was determined not to complain. The small area surrounded by green curtains was filled by the bed she was lying on, the machinery of the Intensive Care Unit and a white chair on which a nurse was sitting reading a book.

This time, the woman had dark eyes and brown hair. Even so, Veronika was not sure if it was the same person she had talked to hours – or was it days? – ago.

‘Can you unstrap my arms?’

The nurse looked up, said a brusque ‘No’, and went back to her book.

I’m alive, thought Veronika. Everything’s going to start all over again. I’ll have to stay in here for a while, until they realise that I’m perfectly normal. Then they’ll let me out, and I’ll see the streets of Ljubljana again, its main square, the bridges, the people going to and from work.

Since people always tend to help others – just so that they can feel they are better than they really are – they’ll give me my job back at the library. In time, I’ll start frequenting the same bars and nightclubs, I’ll talk to my friends about the injustices and problems of the world, I’ll go to the cinema, take walks around the lake.

Since I only took sleeping pills, I’m not disfigured in any way: I’m still young, pretty, intelligent, I won’t have any difficulty in getting boyfriends, I never did. I’ll make love with them in their houses, or in the woods, I’ll feel a certain degree of pleasure, but the moment I reach orgasm, the feeling of emptiness will return. We won’t have much to talk about, and both he and I will know it. The time will come to make our excuses – ‘It’s late’, or ‘I have to get up early tomorrow’ – and we’ll part as quickly as possible, avoiding looking each other in the eye.

I’ll go back to my rented room in the convent. I’ll try and read a book, turn on the TV to see the same old programmes, set the alarm clock to wake up at exactly the same time I woke up the day before and mechanically repeat my tasks at the library. I’ll eat a sandwich in the park opposite the theatre, sitting on the same bench, along with other people who also choose the same benches on which to sit and have their lunch, people who all have the same vacant look, but pretend to be pondering extremely important matters.

Then I’ll go back to work, I’ll listen to the gossip about who’s going out with whom, who’s suffering from what, how such and such a person was in tears about her husband, and I’ll be left with the feeling that I’m privileged: I’m pretty, I have a job, I can have any boyfriend I choose. So I’ll go back to the bars at the end of the day, and the whole thing will start again.

My mother, who must be out of her mind with worry over my suicide attempt, will recover from the shock and will keep asking me what I’m going to do with my life, why I’m not the same as everyone else, things really aren’t as complicated as I think they are. ‘Look at me, for example, I’ve been married to your father for years, and I’ve tried to give you the best possible upbringing and set you the best possible example.’

One day, I’ll get tired of hearing her constantly repeating the same things, and to please her I’ll marry a man whom I oblige myself to love. He and I will end up finding a way of dreaming of a future together: a house in the country, children, our children’s future. We’ll make love often in the first year, less in the second, and after the third year, people perhaps think about sex only once a fortnight and transform that thought into action only once a month. Even worse, we’ll barely talk. I’ll force myself to accept the situation, and I’ll wonder what’s wrong with me, because he no longer takes any interest in me, ignores me, and does nothing but talk about his friends, as if they were his real world.

When the marriage is just about to fall apart, I’ll get pregnant. We’ll have a child, feel closer to each other for a while, and then the situation will go back to what it was before.

I’ll begin to put on weight like the aunt that nurse was talking about yesterday – or was it days ago, I don’t really know. And I’ll start to go on diets, systematically defeated each day, each week, by the weight that keeps creeping up regardless of the controls I put on it. At that point, I’ll take those magic pills that stop you feeling depressed, then I’ll have a few more children, conceived during nights of love that pass all too quickly. I’ll tell everyone that the children are my reason for living, when in reality my life is their reason for living.

People will always consider us a happy couple, and no one will know how much solitude, bitterness and resignation lies beneath the surface happiness.

Until one day, when my husband takes a lover for the first time, and I will perhaps kick up a fuss like the nurse’s aunt, or think again of killing myself. By then, though, I’ll be too old and cowardly, with two or three children who need my help, and I’ll have to bring them up and help them find a place in the world before I can just abandon everything. I won’t commit suicide: I’ll make a scene, I’ll threaten to leave and take the children with me. Like all men, my husband will back down, he’ll tell me he loves me and that it won’t happen again. It won’t even occur to him that, if I really did decide to leave, my only option would be to go back to my parents’ house and stay there for the rest of my life, forced to listen to my mother going on and on all day about how I lost my one opportunity for being happy, that he was a wonderful husband despite his peccadillos, that my children will be traumatised by the separation.

Two or three years later, another woman will appear in his life. I’ll find out – because I saw them, or because someone told me – but this time I’ll pretend I don’t know. I used up all my energy fighting against that other lover, I’ve no energy left, it’s best to accept life as it really is, and not as I imagined it to be. My mother was right.

He will continue being a considerate husband, I will continue working at the library, eating my sandwiches in the square opposite the theatre, reading books I never quite manage to finish, watching television programmes that are the same as they were ten, twenty, fifty years ago.

Except that I’ll eat my sandwiches with a sense of guilt, because I’m getting fatter; and I won’t go to bars any more, because I have a husband expecting me to come home and look after the children.

After that, it’s a matter of waiting for the children to grow up and of spending all day thinking about suicide, without the courage to do anything about it. One fine day, I’ll reach the conclusion that that’s what life is like, there’s no point worrying about it, nothing will change. And I’ll accept it.

Veronika brought her interior monologue to a close and made a promise to herself: she would not leave Villete alive. It was best to put an end to everything now, while she was still brave and healthy enough to die.

She fell asleep and woke up several times, noticing that the number of machines around her was diminishing, the warmth of her body was growing, and the nurses’ faces kept changing; but there was always someone beside her. Through the green curtain she heard the sound of someone crying, groans or voices whispering in calm, technical tones. From time to time, a distant machine would buzz and she would hear hurried footsteps along the corridor. Then the voices would lose their calm, technical tone and become tense, issuing rapid orders.

In one of her lucid moments, a nurse asked her:

‘Don’t you want to know how you are?’

‘I already know,’ replied Veronika. ‘And it’s nothing to do with what you can see happening in my body, it’s what’s happening in my soul.’

The nurse tried to continue the conversation, but Veronika pretended to be asleep.

When she opened (#ulink_aee676fa-84b8-52a6-9105-776cd4c541b2)her eyes again for the first time, she realised that she had been moved; she was in what looked like a large ward. She still had a drip in her arm, but all the other wires and needles had been removed.

A tall doctor, wearing the traditional white coat, in sharp contrast to the artificial black of his dyed hair and beard, was standing at the foot of her bed. Beside him, a young junior doctor holding a clipboard was taking notes.

‘How long have I been here?’ she asked, noticing that she spoke with some difficulty, slurring her words slightly.

‘You’ve been in this ward for two weeks, after five days spent in the Intensive Care Unit,’ replied the older man. ‘And just be grateful that you’re still here.’

The younger man seemed surprised, as if that final remark did not quite fit the facts. Veronika noticed his reaction at once, and her instincts were alerted: had she been here longer? Was she still in some danger? She began to pay attention to each gesture, each movement the two men made; she knew it was pointless asking questions, they would never tell her the truth, but if she was clever, she could find out what was going on.

‘Tell me your name, address, marital status and date of birth,’ the older man said. Veronika knew her name, her marital status and her date of birth, but she realised there were blanks in her memory: she couldn’t quite remember her address.

The doctor shone a light in her eyes and examined them for a long time, in silence. The young man did the same thing. They exchanged glances, which meant absolutely nothing.

‘Did you say to the night nurse that we couldn’t see into your soul?’ asked the younger man.

Veronika couldn’t remember. She was having difficulty knowing who she was and what she was doing there.

‘You have been kept in an artificially induced sleep with tranquillisers, and that might affect your memory a bit, but please try to answer all our questions.’

And the doctors began an absurd questionnaire, wanting to know the names of the principal Ljubljana newspapers, the name of the poet whose statue was in the main square (ah, that she would never forget, every Slovene has the image of Prešeren engraved on his or her soul), the colour of her mother’s hair, the names of her colleagues at work, the titles of the most popular books at the library.

To begin with, Veronika considered not replying – her memory was still confused – but as the questionnaire continued, she began reconstructing what she’d forgotten. At one point, she remembered that she was now in a mental hospital, and that the mad were not obliged to be coherent; but, for her own good, and to keep the doctors by her side, in order to see if she could find out something more about her state, she began making a mental effort. As she recited the names and facts, she was recovering not only her memory, but also her personality, her desires, her way of seeing life. The idea of suicide, which, that morning, appeared buried beneath several layers of sedatives, resurfaced.

‘Fine,’ said the older man, at the end of the questionnaire.

‘How much longer must I stay here?’

The younger man lowered his eyes, and she felt as if everything were hanging in the air, as if, once that question was answered, a new chapter of her life would be written, and no one would be able to change it.

‘You can tell her,’ said the older man. ‘A lot of other patients have already heard the rumours, and she’ll find out in the end anyway; it’s impossible to keep secrets round here.’

‘Well, you decided your own fate,’ sighed the young man, weighing each word. ‘So you had better know the consequence of your actions: during the coma brought on by the pills you took, your heart was irreversibly damaged. There was a necrosis of the ventricle…’

‘Put it in layman’s terms,’ said the older man. ‘Get straight to the point.’